John O’Malley LYONS, known as Jack. Died 4 April 1945, aged 70 years, on Duck Creek Station 140 miles east of Onslow. Present at the burial was C. C. Dalton. The grave is about 2 ½ miles south-west of the station camp on the west bank of the Serpentine Creek. John Lyons was a Pastoralist who probably died of old age and malnutrition. He had lived in Western Australia for 50 years. Born about 1875 in Kyneton, Victoria. Son of Martin LYONS and Elizabeth MOYLAN from Co Clare, Ireland.
In 1923, Jack acquired the Duck Creek Station, and sometime later he was joined in the venture by his younger brother, Patrick Joseph Farnell LYONS. The brothers remained hard-working bachelors, and times were tough, but they battled on. Patrick, who died of fever in 1947, is also buried at Orange Tree Well on the Duck Creek Station.
Patrick Lyons died in 1947, at 63 years old, on Wyloo Station. Ted Barrett-Lennard and Don Sears took his body back to Duck Creek for burial next to his brother John at Orange Tree Well in the Ashburton district. Patrick was a pastoralist who passed away at a windmill on Wyloo Station.
After the death of the Lyons brothers, the lease of the station passed on to the Barrett-Lennard family.
Landscape with mountain in the distance, Duck Creek and Hardey River region, Western Australia, 1950-1955 – Image SLWA
The following poem, ‘A tribute to a Bushman’ was written by Norman Dunbar Craig, who later wrote regarding this grave – “It would be well over 20 years since I first saw Jack Lyons’ grave on the western side of Duck Creek at a place known to us as Orange Tree. The tree was alive then, but as the place became more derelict, the tree died as the mill was not pumping water. We used to use the homestead only as a camp, as the cattle were starting to wreck the old cottage, Joe Elliott got me to put a fence around it.
A Tribute to a Bushman
Where the hills are steep and rugged
And the wattles bend and wave
By a bend in a creek in the ranges
Lies a Bushman’s lonely grave
Gone are the rails that marked it
And many summers have found
The last resting place of the Bushman
Is only a weed-grown mound.
In this lonely place in the ranges
Where the scrubbers and wallabies roam
Midst the river gums and blue bloodwoods
This Bushman made his home.
His cattle roamed the valleys
No wire to fence them in;
his boundaries as he knew them
Stretched out to the sunsets rim.
The last of the old-time Stockman
The last of a dying breed,
Born to fork the saddle and
To steady up the lead
His stockwhip rang in the musters
O’er the country where he rode
On tireless horses with speckled dogs
He lived the Bushman’s code
He’s resting now on the creek bank
Where the south wind sighs in the trees
And the tall grass by his graveside
Is caressed by the evening breeze.
When the wild dog stirs from his rocky lair
And the moon rides high in the sky,
I wonder – ‘Does the old timer hear”
The brumby mobs go by?
Oh, hear again the curlew’s wail
Or the dingo’s lonesome cry,
Or see again the fiery streaks
That light up the western sky?
Rest well, in peace, old timer,
Your grave is known to me.
When passing through with cattle
Your mound I’ll always see;
And sit on my horse and wonder
At the grit of the pioneer,
See the swirling dust, hear the hoof beats
Of musters of yesteryear.
by Craig Dunbar
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